31 December 2008

Undertone has updated his developer journal with screen shots of his newest project, ps_sand. PS_sand, a remake of the FA classic has undergone a drastic change from the original. The reason for this change Undertone said is that "it would have been a little boring and a bit of a stretch on the suspension of disbelief if the map was just rocky walls and concrete... facilities."

As you can see the map has undergone drastic changes from its original creation.

DysPatch updated his developer journal with more news about port of a classic FA map, ps_sandblast, for FAS. While the map will bear many similarities to the FA classic, it will also be updated for FAS.

The most obvious difference between DysPatch's remake and the original is the change from sand to snow. DysPatch states that "a lot of levels in our line up consist of sand maps" and they want to avoid an over abundance of sand maps that plague many FPS.

Besides the theme change, the layout as well has been changed so it reflects more of a real world location instead of a FPS level. Despite this change the overall game play will remain intact.

Even though the FAS Team has map's original creator, Jeff Lane, permission to use the map's name and layout for FAS, the DysPatch has opted to not use the original name; due to the theme and layout change, the name of the map has been renamed to ps_snowstorm and Jeff Lane given credit.

The following is an early screen shot of ps_snowblast from DysPatch's developer's blog. Updated screen shots should come soon with the upcoming massive media update.

Hitman has updated his developers journal with more information about FAS's progress. Hitman states that they are still in closed testing, but much progress has been made. Much of the work done is on the art side: the M79 has been fully skinned and has new renders, Nato has been working very hard on the M24, and the team has been creating new player models. The new players models have been progressing swiftly with the help of Shinobi, Schmung, StealthSilver and TheUltra4sshole. There is still work to do with the player models, such as "skin tweaks and a weightjob."

In addition to updated skins, weapon and player models, the FAS team has also been working on five new maps. DysPatch has been working on a map which may be featured in an upcoming news update. Undertone as well is working on a new port of a classic FA map, Hitman has a new map that has been featured in the past alpha builds and will be shown soon and Shinobi has two maps which haven't been seen by the public yet.

Hitman states that art aspects of FAS (models, skins, ext) are still the major holdup and said "we only recently hired the art crew we needed and a lot of work remains to be done." However, Hitman is hopeful that "we will have some major surprises in store for everyone very soon." He continues on saying that the updates should start coming more regularly again since the ability to produce high quality screen shots and videos will be in place for quicker updates. Also, the main FAS website will be updated in the upcoming weeks to make it easier to navigate.